Rossiiskaya Gazeta

November 27, 1996

During the first ten and a half months of the current year the number of HIV-infected people reached the level of all the previous nine years from the moment the first AIDS case was registered in the USSR. To date, there are 2,081 HIV-infected patients in Russia and 245 people suffering from that lethal disease, with more than 60 people catching that "20th century plague" every week. By now 165 people have already died from AIDS, and 41 more have committed suicide or died from other causes.

Before the beginning of this year only three drug-addicts were officially registered among the infected people. By now their number has gone up to 750. The infection level is particularly high in the Kaliningrad region, in Novorossiisk, Saratov, and Nizhni Novgorod.

In Russia the number of HIV-infected people keeps growing in geometrical progression, which gives reason to speak of the beginning of an AIDS epidemic in Russia, the ITAR-TASS correspondent was told by Mikhail Narkevich, the Russian Federation's national AIDS-combatting coordinator.